As fast as your processor can be, it can only wait while requested data is read or written to a magnetic hard disk. The Kingston SSDNow V+ Solid State Drive (SSD) from Kingston uses MLC NAND flash technology and tries to solve this problem. Like laptop HDDs, it has a 2.5in form factor and uses the SATA-2 interface.

As with other SSDs, the Kingston SSDNow V+ Series can withstand light shocks, is silent and does not heat up in operation, which is good for HTPCs and high-end desktops/laptops. Compared to today's mainstream HDDs that consume at least 5 Watts on average, this SSD is rated to use 2.6W while active and 0.15W at idle. But the capacity of SSDs today is such that you can only reasonably use it as a bootable OS drive, and continue using magnetic HDDs alongside to store user data.

In synthetic benchmarks, read speeds averaged a consistent 176.6 MB/s right across the Kingston SSDNow V+ Series drive, without a dip in the speed graph. Write speeds averaged a consistent 143.1 MB/s with negligible CPU utilisation, and random access time of 0.31ms. In comparison, average desktop drives average 75 MB/s read, 60 MB/s write, and 12ms random access time.

Real world write speed while copying a single large file of 6.42 GB onto the SSD stood at 126.3 MB/s. Copying multiple smaller files (800 files totaling up to 6.36 GB) on to the Kingston SSDNow V+ Series SSD was almost the same speed, at 125 MB/s. Copying multiple small files from one partition to another, was at 45 MB/s.

The Kingston SSDNow V+ Series SSD's reduced access time makes a huge difference to the speed of applications that frequently access the hard disk or have to load a number of files. For many patterns of usage, using a faster storage device (like an SSD) makes a larger impact on performance than adding to system RAM.

As expected, the read speed was far higher than performance-oriented magnetic HDDs, and the write speeds were encouraging too. The price is also more affordable than Intel's SSDs, and you might see an even better purchase price at shops. Kingston offers a limited warranty of 3 years on this drive (part number SNV225-S2/64GB).

SSD gets more affordable for normal users with the Kingston SSDNow V+ Series 64GB drive. Enthusiasts cannot ignore the allure of this solid state drive, with its potential for speeding up the system and silent operation.

The Western Digital Scorpio Blue WD7500BPVT is a 2.5in internal SATA II hard drive suitable for notebooks, media players and other portable devices. It boasts a roomy 750GB capacity (a 1TB version is also available), a 5400rpm spin speed and 8MB of cache.

The term "affordable SSD" would describe the Intel X25-V 40GB solid state drive well. Making high performance available around the £80-£90 mark, this could well be the tipping point that gets everyone participating in the Solid State Drive revolution.

Smart home- or wearable tech: which is more likely to benefit your digital life this year?

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